Names (Part 1)

The rock is cold and smooth beneath my fingers and after awhile, despite the chill, I start to feel it pulsing slightly. I feel the smooth stone moving under my fingertips ever so gently and through it I imagine I can feel the entire planet reaching up to me, touching me and soothing me. Telling me it will be okay. Willing me to be silent and calm.

The stars though, they tell a different story. As I feel the gentle pulsing of the stones beneath my hands and even my bare feet, the smooth cool surface of the broad river rocks under my naked calves and the gentle moss under my arm, I can also feel the stars looking down on me with a different pulsing. One altogether more ominous and not so comforting as the earth beneath me.

The stars know what I've done.

* * *

“Sophie, watch out!”

Darya's voice calls out from the earpiece in the slightly static way that everything has up here and I look up to see the girder drifting gently towards me. Silly Darya, always clumsy when she's in an Evo suit and always nervous about it.

“I see it Dar, don't worry. I'm a big girl.”

I hope she can sense the smile through my voice but I know it's hard for her. She is so sensitive to the smallest slight or displeasure. It's amazing how quickly one can become attached to a person in so few months. It is easier when there is only the two of you, especially if you occupy one bunk by turns. After a while you come to understand the scents left in the pinned down sheets when the other leaves. Come to know from the smell of their sweat if they are happy or discontent.

If they are nervous because a micro meteorite hit part of the rigging for the solar collectors. If they are nervous because they know they'll have to spend time outside the cabin with you.

“I'm sorry, Sophie. I just have such a hard time with these big gloves, you know? I was really designed to work on electrics, not this big brutish stuff.”

“Well don't think for an instant I'd ask you out here to help if I could do it on my own! I'd hate to put those delicate little hands of yours in danger.”

But she's right. Her hands really were designed for soldering connections on circuit boards and constructing tiny apparatus, not for moving three thousand pound girders around the perimeter of a spacecraft. Not that we can feel the weight of those girders. And those hands, so delicate. So unlike the big Russian farm girl I expected her to be when I found her name on the crew allotment. A shame—she would've been much more useful out here if she had been that Russian farm girl instead.

“I can handle this, even if I'm not a big bear like you. I'm just a little clumsy, that's all.”

“I know, I know. I'm just messing with you, Dar. Don't worry.”

She's silent for a while then, hovering on the end of her tether about twenty feet away, watching me as I slip the new girder into place on the solar arm and then pushing the damaged one off and away from the ship. I wish I could see inside that helmet of hers and know what she thinks in there. As many times as I've done these stints, I've never been so intrigued by the oddities of another worker like this one. Usually they are big thoughtless cows who have no thoughts besides the pay off at the end of the trip, not scared little girls with blonde hair and shifting blue eyes.

We shall see how we feel in another three months, at that. By the end of the out-solar run everyone reaches a point where they no longer care for the other worker, only for the voyage to end. I cannot wait for that time.

* * *

“I really wish you wouldn't call me 'Dar,' you know.”

“And why not? You call me Sophie.”

“Yes, but you introduced yourself as Sophie. I told you my name was Darya.”

“Oh, but that's such a silly name, Darya. So indiscriminately Russian and harsh. Dar has such a nice ring to it, though.”

“Maybe. I just like my name, that's all. Couldn't you respect that?”

“Meh, who cares. We only spend a few sentences together each day. I could call you anything and it would make no difference.”

“But Sophie, it would. Our names are all we have that make us human.”

“All we have? All we have?! And this spacecraft? These mining tools which we use to harvest the asteroids a million miles from our home planet? This doesn't make us something special? Something human?”

“No.”

“And what does, at that?”

“Our souls, Sophie. Our souls and the names they wear.”

* * *

It's staring at me, and in its eyes I see a fire burning. The flames lick up in little tendrils from around the deep orange pupil, licking the edges as if testing for a weakness there. Flicking out toward the edges of the eye as if each one carries the burning heart of a glistening sun. Solar flares of evil running out from the thing's brain and poisoning the world outside.

The eyes like worlds surrounded by the matted black fur that glistens in a way no fur should glisten. Fur that doesn't float outward in the weightlessness but instead hangs flat and dry, but glistening all the same. And why should a space faring creature have fur at all?

Fur or fangs, which glisten with the light from the ship's LED lights. Fangs which send tiny little globules of moisture floating in any direction away from them. Why should a creature in the night of space have fangs and fur at all.

“Sophie, why are you staring in the mirror like that?”

“What?”

“You're scaring me.”